Mark Zuckerberg testimony: Summoned to Washington to explain at public hearings in Congress, Mark Zuckerberg fulfilled his mission. Faced with senators and MPs, the last more aggressive than the first, the boss of Facebook, failing to be smiling and relaxed, has been humble and constructive. In a dark suit and tie, looking serious against an army of photographs and cameras, he tried to forget his pale t-shirt and his legendary hood.
After a dozen hours of the hearing, the Congress is not about to enact in the urgency of new binding rules likely to upset the economic model of Facebook. Wall Street is relieved. However, the anger in front of repeated blunders Facebook has manifested. “If Facebook cannot solve its private data protection problems, we will do it,” summed up immediately the Democratic Senator of Florida, Ben Nelson. Mark Zuckerberg took the leap, explaining that Facebook “is going through a period of vast philosophical change.” He no longer presents himself as the passionate young developer of a platform that has become indispensable to more than two billion earthlings. He wants to embody the boss of a “responsible” company and show that he is aware of his mistakes. On Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg even admitted, to everyone’s surprise, that his personal account data had itself been recovered by “malicious third-party companies.” He said his company was “thinking” about the issue. a lawsuit by Cambridge Analytica, the British data analytics company that caused the scandal.
The man who still holds 60% of the voting rights in the company that was founded in 2004 is also responsible for not only the technology of its platform but also the diffusive content. He has repeatedly refused to call himself a “media”, a subject he has always sucked. Facebook, he says, is a technology company, which wants to make sure that is used to do good. “It is clear that we have not done enough to prevent our tools being used to harm. Whether in the dissemination of “news”, in the interference of foreigners in our elections, in the relationship with hate speech, or in our control of the promoters and their private use. We did not have a broad view of our responsibility and it was a big mistake, “admits the 33-year-old billionaire. He hammered that by the end of the year Facebook will employ “more than 20,000 people in data security and content monitoring tasks.”
